


she wants to say

by Darling_Pretty



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, So much angsty fluff, hand-wavy science makes peggy young, it's fine don't worry about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-08 22:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12263544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darling_Pretty/pseuds/Darling_Pretty
Summary: A million times that Peggy Carter didn't say I love you and the one time she did.





	she wants to say

The problem, she thinks, is not with her vocal chords, but with her lips.

 

For every time she looks at him, her vocal chords are open, ready, poised to say the words she so desperately wants to. When he looks up and his hair has managed to flop ever so becomingly into his eyes, fighting off the Berylcreem she’s sure he uses, Peggy longs to reach out and swipe it back. She doesn’t for the sake of professionalism, but she _wants_ to and her vocal chords want to say it, yet her mouth fumbles.

 

Inevitably, what she does manage to say is something hinting at praise, kind words because Lord knows Steve Rogers could do with hearing them, and at least she gets to watch his eyes light up. He tries to hide how pleased her words make him but for all of his virtues, Steve Rogers is a terrible liar.

 

She imagines what he’d look like if she managed to choke out the words that have been strangling her since he jumped on that grenade at Lehigh, though they’ve only recently become truly real to her. She thinks he’d be shy; his color would rise in his cheeks—how lucky the formula hadn’t fixed that quirk! He’d stammer and run a big palm across the back of his neck, but he’d be pleased and happy, so happy.

 

She’d be happy too, for saying it. But somehow the words don’t come and instead die in her throat.

 

During the day, she is the picture of professional courtesy. At night she dreams of his hands, his eyes, his smile. In her dreams she says it. Over and over again. Freely and unencumbered. _I love you, you beautiful boy. I love you, darling man. I love you. I love you. I love you, Steve Rogers._

But she’s paralyzed by day and Peggy is beginning to fear she is a coward.

* * *

 

 

When he returns from behind enemy lines, not only safe but a _hero_ of thousands of men, Peggy’s heart leaps, ready to explode with pride and with love. She could fling her arms around his neck and cover his face with kisses. Her hands stay glued to her sides instead and she stands a respectable distance.

 

( _I love you_ , she wants to say.)  
“You’re late,” she says.

* * *

 

 

He’s bent over a map, marking the bases and plants he remembers from a thirty second glance at a map in dim light. Peggy is astounded by the sheer recall, not to mention his ability to simply put his head down and get to work. The lights of the underground headquarters usually do nothing for anyone, but his hair gleams gold in the lamplight.

 

( _I love you_ , she wants to say.)  
“Well, nobody’s perfect,” she teases.

* * *

 

 

It’s a move she’s perfected over the years, though not _particularly_ complicated; dress to the nines (or rather these days wear anything besides drab olive or khaki), go to a pub or any gathering place, and bask in male attention. It’s perhaps unfair to set this trap for unsuspecting Steve Rogers. But then he doesn’t once look down at her cleavage (which she’d _tried_ to accentuate), doesn’t even look at her scarlet lips. No, he looks her in the eyes and gazes steadfastly, even as his best friend sizes her up. (Once upon a time she might have taken Sergeant Barnes to bed, but she’s slept alone for long enough now it’s become habit. And there’s Steve.)

 

( _I love you_ , she wants to say.)

“I might even, when this is all over, go dancing,” she mentions and it is something of an invitation.

* * *

 

 

She finds his lips locked with another woman and Peggy sees red in a way she never has. Jealousy flares and she could knock his teeth in or maybe Lorraine’s and definitely Howard’s just for being nearby. She wants to shake him, grab him kiss him. It’s meant to be her and she hopes that’s not being presumptuous, though of course it is when she can’t so much as tell him her feelings.

 

( _I love you_ , she wants to say.)  
She shoots at him.

* * *

 

 

They’re freezing their bloody arses off in the middle of goddamn western Russian nowhere and if Dugan doesn’t arrive with the jeep soon, she’s going to bleed out long before the cold can get to her. Is it the chill or the seeping wound in her shoulder that’s causing her to tremble? Steve holds her to himself tightly, keeping her warm, keeping the wound stable and under pressure. Her blood is on his hands and the arms of his Cap suit and she thinks it wouldn’t be so bad to die like this, if only he knew what she’s been trying to say. Jones is yammering in the background, something about blood types, transfusions. If only Steve wouldn’t look so morose. She reaches up with her good arm, smoothes his hair back, smiles.

 

( _I love you_ , she wants to say.)

She faints instead.

* * *

 

 

She does not need to be told that his blood runs through her veins. His face says it when she wakes miles and hours away, sheltered from the wind by the tent set up as a makeshift infirmary. Jones mentions that no one logged the transfusion. For all intents and purposes, it never happened. Then he tries to make her lie still; Peggy touches Steve’s arm.

 

( _I love you_ , she wants to say.)

“Thank you,” she whispers.

* * *

 

 

He sits in a bombed out bar and he has obviously been crying. She does not point it out, just a small kindness in a world so dark. Picking up a chair, she sits with him. She does not diminish his sadness, his anger, but she knows he will become corrupted if he sits and stews with his thoughts, allows them to strip him of the basic humanity she so admires.

 

( _I love you_ , she wants to say.)

It’s not the time. “You won’t be alone,” she promises.

* * *

 

 

There’s not enough time, there’s never enough time. The car speeds towards the airplane. She grabs him, kisses him softly like she’s always wanted to.

 

( _I love you_ , she wants to say.)

“Go get him,” she says and he is gone.

* * *

 

 

The radio room is awful, hot and stuffy, like there’s no air at all in the room. Steve’s voice crackles through the receiver and she scrambles to respond. She begs for more time (there is no more time), coordinates (no coordinates). In the end, she sits and plans a date that they both understand will never come to be. She promises to teach him to dance.

 

( _I love you_ , she wants to say.)

There’s not enough time, only static.

* * *

 

 

Peggy stands on the Brooklyn Bridge, her darling boy’s home, exhausted and sore from her exploits, a vial in her hand. She gives him the proper burial he deserves. She tries to let him go.

 

( _I love you_ , she wants to say.)

She can’t get it out. “Goodbye, my darling,” she says instead.

* * *

 

 

She is forty years old and continues to look twenty-five. It seems the serum’s restorative properties are held in the blood cells that no one knows she has. She wonders if she is cursed; she had prayed every day during the war for more time. And the Lord had seen fit to give it to her, only without the one person to make it worth it. She does her best to move forward, takes lovers from time to time, makes friends that she holds at arms’ length.

 

(Often she wonders if Steve would approve of her choice to remain childless, to throw herself into creating a new intelligence agency, to create something _good_.)

* * *

 

 

Peggy is ninety-six years old, though she’s yet to even develop crow’s feet. She lives alone, with an incredibly temperamental cat that hates everyone except Peggy when she feeds him. She rather dotes on him; with all the free time she has now that she’s stepped away from SHIELD, she sits and reads with the cat hovering nearby, displeased her attention isn’t on him, meowing until she caves and gives him a treat.

 

She is ninety-six and possibly a strange iteration of a cat lady when the doorbell rings. Peggy is old and world-weary; she’s given up even bothering to check who it is at the door. If somebody wants to track her down and kill her now, when according to every report and document she is quietly dying with dementia in a nursing home, quite frankly they deserve it.

 

Her door swings inwards, so Peggy shuffles backwards just a hint to make room for it. She sees the visitor’s shoes first, unremarkable white tennis shoes. Then she looks up.

 

Steve looks stricken, his face pale, save two bright splotches high in his cheeks. Peggy suspects she’s not faring much better.

 

“I, uh, got this address from an Agent Romanoff…”

 

Peggy could have _hugged_ Natasha- the one keeper of her secret- in that moment. “Steve,” she whispers and feels like she’s summoned a ghost.

 

“Peggy…” His voice is choked, strangled with words and tears; Peggy’s eyes prickle with tears and then he gives a joyful whoop, the sort of sound she’s never heard from him. In moments, she’s swept into his arms, lifted onto her toes and he’s crushing her ribs but she couldn’t possibly care less.

 

His shoulders shake and she realizes he’s crying. Her cheeks are wet too, but that’s less important. “Oh, my darling,” she murmurs, rubbing circles on his back, tracing his cheeks and wiping away any wetness she finds. “Oh, you _darling_ , darling man.”

 

( _I love you_ , she wants to say.)

“I love you,” she says because she's waited seventy years and there's no time like the present.

 

She was right all those years ago; he’s _radiant_ as he kisses her breath away.


End file.
